Car owners have a long-standing desired to provide their automobiles with a beautiful, shiny appearance, and to protect the underlying paint from environmental damage such as mud, water spots, and the effects of the sun. Over the years, car owners have come to prefer paste waxes to protect and beautify the exterior painted surfaces of their vehicles because wax finishes are typically more durable than finishes provided by wax-free products. One reason for their durability is that waxes provide harder coatings than greases or oils. Because of their superior hardness, waxes do not thin out when polished to a high-gloss sheen by rubbing with a polishing cloth.
During the 1950's, silicone-polymer-containing liquid emulsions supplanted paste waxes as vehicle polishes in the consumer market because these emulsions are generally easier to apply to a car's finish, contained "built-in" road tar removers, and could be polished with less effort. However, those consumers who are more serious about the appearance of their car's finish (i.e., aficionados), and who restore vintage automobiles, continue to believe that higher gloss and durable finishes can only be achieved with paste waxes. These aficionados, as well as a broader class of specialty auto finish consumers, perceive paste wax finishes as being hard and durable and conversely perceive emulsion based finishes as being soft, and easily removed. Furthermore, the specialty market is concerned with other properties of paste wax, for example the subjective feel or "hand" of wax as it is spread out on a painted surface. If the wax is too soft or contains too much non-volatile solvent, the wax can be "smeary" and slow drying. Conversely, if the wax is too hard, it can be difficult to "rub-out." Thus, there exists a need for a wax composition having desired physical properties including durability, ease of application, and stain resistance.
Wax compositions should also be amenable to efficient manufacturing processes. Generally, paste wax compositions exist in a solid or semi-solid state at room temperature, and must be heated to a liquid state in order to pour the material into a packaging container. Many paste wax compositions have been made of chemical components that when combined in a liquid state, will separate into two phases. After heating the composition and pouring into a packaging container, these compositions would phase separate before solidifying. As a result, these paste wax compositions would have to be poured into packaging containers in a series of steps: pouring an amount that would cool before phase separating, allowing the poured material to cool and solidify, and pouring again, until the container was filled. This step-wise process is time consuming from a manufacturing standpoint. Thus, there also exists a need for wax compositions that does not phase separate when in a liquid state, and that can be poured into a packaging container in a single step process, without experiencing gross phase separation.